We would like to thank everybody for taking part in our debut tournament of our first 9-Ball Pool Tour. We worked hard to bring a quality event to the 9-Ball pool scene and to see everybody enjoying themselves, was a terrific thing to watch, and made all the hard work satisfying.

A 28-player field took to the tables shortly after 11am for the initial group stages. Some interesting groups were drawn and a couple of close matches in all the groups.

The group stages were very competitive with almost a third of all games heading to final frame deciders. On the flipside, almost half of all games were decisively won with 5-1 and 5-2 score lines.

One notable final frame decider was between Ben Bradley and Nimesh Patel in their final group game to determine the second-place finish in group C and hence progression into the elimination. A very close decider, going right down to the 9-ball. A missed opportunity by Ben gave Nimesh a chance to win via a very acute full table length bank shot of which he pocketed to book himself a place in the last 16.

John Chapman had to fight top spot Adam Lewis in their group, for a second-place finish and came victorious in his final-frame decider also, in their 3rd and last game. A loss would have risked a second-place finish, putting him equal on points with Ian Welch and second place having to be decided via their rack stats of which were extremely close.

The draw was made with all first-place finishes in the first bag and all second-place finishes plus two top 3rd place finishes in the second bag.

Of the 7 groups, 4 players emerged unbeaten – Ashik Nathwani, Gary Bullocke, Bradley Parker and Luke Garland – their strength in game showing as all 4 also progressed from the last 16 Single Elimination into the last 8, to also be joined by Benji Buckley, Connor Anderson, Nimesh Patel and Adam Lewis.

Quarter Finals:

Now down to the final 8, Adam Lewis and John Chapman met again following on from their group stage, with Adam coming victorious in a 7-5 win. Ashik Nathwani defeated Adam Lewis 7-6 in a close encounter, Nimesh Patel fell just short against Connor Anderson 7-5 and Bradley Parker booked his place in the semi-finals by beating Benji Buckley 7-4.

For the semi’s, starting with Bradley Parker vs Luke Garland the match was a close affair throughout but Luke Garland came out on top with a 7-5 win and booked himself a spot in the final. Ashik Nathwani vs Connor Anderson was the second semi-final - with Ashik playing faultlessly, and with Connor only missing 2 shots throughout the match, Ashik booked himself a place in the final with an impressive 7-3 victory.

The final starred Ashik Nathwani and Luke Garland. Ashik took a nice 3-1 lead but then Luke dramatically miscued on his break, of which Ashik took full advantage of via the 3 foul rule, taking it to 4-1. Luke won the next rack to make it 4-2 hoping to stage a comeback, but Ashik was again in imperious form, missing very little, and the match became a one-sided affair with Ashik winning 7-2 on the front foot.

A tournament director winning his own tournament – surely not a fix, right! An amazing achievement by Ashik - he was unbeaten throughout the entire tournament and deserves his impressive win, and whilst managing a very busy tournament, made the feat even more impressive.

Nimesh Patel was picked out first to try and clear up 10 balls to take an impressive £170 jackpot but he broke dry.

The second picked ticket was Benji Buckley who broke and potted 2 balls and landed perfectly on the 1 ball with the balls perfect for him to take the pot of £170, of which he did without running out of position. Congratulations Benji! 🎉

The Magna Rack - Tony Cureton

Photographer - Anup Bhatt

Tournament Director T-Shirts - PxC Agency

Finally thank you to everybody that entered our first event. We really appreciate all of your support for our tour and greatly admire the players that traveled between 3 and 4 hours to this tournament – indicating immense dedication not only to our tour but to the cue sports scene in general.

We run this for our players and want to give great value back to them. We hope to see everybody in Event 2 which will be held on Sunday 27th February.